One of the new rune paths has been unveiled, and it’s a little weird

Patch 7.16 arrived today, and that means we’re one patch closer to the preseason update this fall. Every year, the preseason update brings a ton of change and hopeful improvements to League of Legends, and 2017 will be no different. This year, both the runes and masteries systems are being replaced and combined into one new rune system.

The project is called Runes Reforged, and today, one of the new rune paths was unveiled. It’s called the Inspiration path, and it’s definitely not what anyone expected. Three of the runes in the path were also revealed. One gives the player a free Zhonya’s (sort of), another gives a second Flash (sort of), and the last one gives the player the ability to take loans out on items at the in-game shop.

Perfect Timing

To explain the first of the runes, we must explain a new item that’s being added to the game alongside it. The item, called the Stopwatch, will be a new component of the Zhonya’s Hourglass. It has the same stasis active as Zhonya’s, but it can only be used once before it’s upgraded into the full item.

The new rune is called Perfect Timing, and it gives the player a free item called the Commencing Stopwatch that transforms into a usable Stopwatch after six minutes have passed in the game. That’s not where the usefulness ends, however. The rune also lowers the cooldown on both Zhonya’s Hourglass and the Guardian Angel by 15 percent.

Channel-Blink

With this rune, after you’ve already used Flash and it’s on cooldown, you’re able to use a channeled version of Flash every 20 seconds. As soon as you enter combat, it goes on a 10-second cooldown, so there’s very limited uses for it.

Like Akali uses it in the example gif, it could be used to clear terrain to make roaming or ganking slightly easier. Alternatively, it could be used to attempt a steal at Baron or Dragon, but if that’s your goal, you better make sure your side of the wall isn’t warded, because they only need to hit you once to interrupt it. There will surely be other uses discovered after the rune goes live, but it won’t be able to make as many clutch plays as a normal Flash.

Store Credit

Store Credit allows you to enter into debt at the in-game shop to buy items. The method of paying back the debt hasn’t been revealed yet, but the idea itself is very unique, unlike the discount Flash and Zhonya’s mentioned above. The amount you can borrow increases as the game goes on. It starts at 150 gold and increases by five every minute. Support items are already extremely cheap, but imagine being able to cut 100 gold off of one. An eight minute Redemption starts to look very common.

The Inspiration rune path is very, very different than anything we’ve been shown before. We’ve seen meteors, massive attack speed boosts, and newly revamped Thunderlord’s and Stormraider’s. These, however, are the most odd. Warped versions of current Summoner Spells are alright, but we’re not sure how we feel about going into debt at the shop. It’s college all over again.